Streamline the Accounting Workflow

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Streamline the Accounting Workflow

There is a vast potential for streamlining the accounting workflow. Being a department that handles large quantities of paper, the accounting area can rapidly become choked with it, which greatly impedes the flow of work. Also, certain employees are more comfortable with clutter than others, and so will allow unusual quantities of materials to proliferate. Managers can attack this problem by focusing on the ongoing elimination of the following items, all of which interfere with the orderly flow of work:

Unneeded chairs, desks, filing cabinets, and carts
Unneeded computers, printers, phones, copiers, and fax machines
Unneeded posted items, such as outdated labor law posters, white boards, corkboards, and old messages on those boards
Excess quantities of office supplies at employee desks, such as printer paper, staplers, tape, and so on.

It is particularly important to search in all possible areas for these items: in corners and behind desks, and especially in drawers, cabinets, and closets, where such items tend to accumulate. To keep accumulation from occurring in these areas, consider removing all doors and drawers in the department. This means that all items are out in plain view, where they can be more easily monitored and therefore eliminated.

Whenever these items are removed from the accounting area, don’t immediately throw them out or send them back to a storage area. Instead, pile them in a holding area that is readily accessible to the staff, so they have a few days to retrieve anything they really need. Then remove the remaining items from the holding area. It may be necessary to tag each item in the holding area, to identify where it came from and how long it should stay there until it is removed. If it is unlikely that an item in the holding area will be used within the next year, then don’t even consign it to storage – instead, put it in the trash or donate it. Otherwise the storage area will become excessively cluttered.

There is the particular problem of what to do about those employees who persist in piling up vast quantities of paperwork and supplies in their work areas. One possibility is the complete rebuilding of a work area. This involves completely emptying out someone’s work area; even removing computer equipment and related cables. Then clean the entire area, and only put the most necessary items back. All other items are removed to a location well away from the employee, who then spends a week deciding how many items that were shifted elsewhere are actually needed. This process will likely liberate a startling number of supplies, and also allow a great deal of paperwork to be filed away.

This process is by no means an annual event – think more in terms of a weekly or monthly review of the accounting area. Clutter increases constantly, so only continual attention will keep it in check.

In addition to clutter reduction, consider reviewing work flows within the department. To do so, create a map of the department, noting all cubicles, office furniture, and equipment. Then note on it the travel paths taken by employees for all activities and note their frequency of travel. A likely result will be the repositioning or removal of furniture and equipment. Also, if the department relies on high-capacity, centralized office equipment, such as printers, faxes and copiers, it will likely make more sense to acquire a large number of lower-capacity units to position very close to individual employees or small groups of staff. Further, the map will clarify which employees need to be clustered together, along with certain document storage areas. By making these changes, travel times within the department can be substantially reduced.

A key detractor from optimum workflow is the filing cabinet. It is a central source of documentation, and because it is extremely heavy, it cannot be moved. Instead, employees must travel to it – possibly many times over the course of a day. An alternative is to buy a number of office carts with wheels; employees load these carts with the files they will need for that day, and position the carts nearby in their work areas. The amount of travel time reduction can be astonishingly high.

The cubicle can be a considerable detriment to an efficient department, because it cannot be easily moved. Instead, swap out cubicles for desks, which can be easily reconfigured to match work flows. For example, group together the desks of the billing, cash application, and collection employees, so they can more easily discuss payment issues. If there is an increased need for more staff in this area, then simply move another desk into the group. If there is no way to avoid cubicles, then at least reduce their wall height, so that employees can more easily interact. High cubicles walls are the bane of employee communications.

Another issue that is frequently overlooked is the storage and replenishment of supplies. There is usually a central storage area for the department, but this is not always the best way to position supplies. For example, consider positioning printer and copier supplies right next to those items, so that users do not have to travel anywhere to find them. Also, assign replenishment responsibility to a single individual, and make sure that person uses a standardized checklist to update supplies on a daily basis. Otherwise, the department will lose valuable time searching for supplies that do not exist.

The result of these activities should be a reduction in the accounting department’s required amount of square footage, which in turn results in less travel time within the department. Thus, a good metric for departmental improvement is either total square footage or (better yet) square footage per person. This metric can be taken to an extreme, since the staff could end up packed together like sardines in a can, so don’t use it as an exclusive metric.

In summary, the accounting department can be continually streamlined to improve its efficiency. The top improvement considerations are to move high-usage items as close to the users as possible, and to remove anything that physically gets in the way.

Podcast

A discussion of office work flow is available on Episode 72 of the Accounting Best Practices podcast. Listen Now.